I think it's too late to tank. Maybe we'll pass Toronto for the 10th pick. They're considering shutting Rudy Gay down in an attempt to tank, but watch that blow up in their face and cause them to win a bunch of games. Then again, maybe the analytics people in the front office will prevail and make Casey play Gay a whole lot.

Oh, nothing. They'd be better. Did you see Aron's letter to the season ticket holders? It's really pathetic, but the weirdest part about it is how it reads like an instruction manual that's been poorly translated from the original Korean. For example, "the Sixers are likely to have fully three picks among the top 42 in the NBA Draft this coming June." Or, "after all, it can be so thrilling to watch great basketball, seeing world-class athletes live and in-person is something that cannot be replicated by a more casual commitment. ["casual commitment" = watching on tv?] Yet those thrills are ever so magnified when they are accompanied by a home team win."

But that makes no sense, because he's saying that seeing the athletes in person can't be replicated by this more casual commitment, so the casual commitment can't involve actually seeing the athletes in person.

The Sixers reduced my season tickets for next year. The tickets (lower level, sec 106) were $44 for many years, then the new owership raised them to $49 last year. The invoice for 2013-14 reads $39. One would think they would make some kind of big announcement about this considering what a media hog Adam Aron is about anything positive. I'm kind of wondering if it is a typo. Anyone hear anything?

Aron's Abington HS English teacher just rolled over in his/her grave. Sixers can't often beat their foes, but he can crank out purple prose trying to get Franklins past your nose to watch a team that veritably blows. Yes, he's a blowhard and it shows.

Seeing Derrick Favors is painful. There's been some criticsm of Favors for not progessing enough. Maybe the Jazz are playing him out of postion. If Favors isn't skilled enough to be a go to power foward, he could quite easily make the transition to a defensive center. If Al Horford can play center, there shouldn't be any reason that Favords couldn't. Check out the measurements:

If needed to sign a FA role player for about 7M a year and your only choices were Hawes or ET, who would you pick (unfortunately you have to pick one.)

I think Hawes has passed ET as a player. Above average reserve who can be an emergency starter who will on occasion win you games. An actual asset if pastored witha rugged 4. While ET also had some good games, I don't think you can say he is better than Hawes.

How do we know Hawes is a true patriot and not some manchurian candidate fake patriot designed by dark patriot-hating forces to make us make fun of real patriots? But yeah, sign Hawes. Turner doesn't pastor well with anyone.

This isn't even a debate at this point. And the more I see people write about how the Sixers have a tough decision to make with Turner (and wow, Turner's going to want more than a $30M extension), the more I pray they trade him this summer. I'd be perfectly fine with the return Miami got for Beasley in a deal to get Turner out of town.

(2) He was the player I was most wrong about ever in the draft. Thought Chicago took the wrong guy at the top of that draft. Thought he was going to be a rebounding machine and a bonafide stretch four in the NBA. Man, I'm dumb.

Beasley could probably have been all that if he wanted to be, he just refuses to play that way. It's a lot like Cousins actually. Surely you would admit that if Cousins cut a lot of junk out of his game, he could be a pretty good offensive player, though his lousy touch around the rim might always inhibit him from achieving his full potential. But Cousins is a headcase, so it hasn't happened yet.

There's no question Hawes adds some value to a team. You just have to have better frontline players around him than the Sixers have to compensate for his weaknesses.

Right now Turner subtracts value, at least from this team.

How about this question. In order to trade Turner this summer, the team will probably have to take a longer contract and/or another player of dubious reputation. Michael Beasley has a similar contract size but has an additional year I believe. He's not playing a lot lately for the Suns. Both he and Turner are about the same age. Would you do this trade? I think I would.

Trading Beasley was simpler sell based on the fact that he was a headcase. Turner on the other hand just sucks.

I wonder how the Sixers brain trust would spin a Turner draft day trade. The Sixers can say something along the lines that a fresh start was needed for all and that drafting Turner was a Stefanski and Collins (assuming that he won't be back)decision. Since they're counting picks now, they could also spin the trade as an opportunity to replenish the sixers draft pick treasure chest which took a hit after the Bynum trade...

I somehow doubt that Turner is overly popular with our fan base, moronic as it may be. To the dumb fan that hated Iguodala, Turner has to seem like an even worse version. Although I'm probably assuming that the dumb fan is working with some faulty premises ("scoring: good!") but then reasons logically from them ("player who can't score much: bad; player who can't score much, does so in a super-inefficient way, and adds nothing else of value: way worse"). In reality, there are probably some fans who think Turner's more skilled, miss the massive gap in defense, judge Iguodala by a higher standard because he got paid too much, etc.

I actually have no solid opinion on the intelligence of the fanbase, I was just assuming that his opinion was correct. Admittedly, I have gotten the sense from what pretty much everyone besides you has said here about philly.com commenters, as well as negative fan sentiment on Iguodala, that the fanbase might not be all that sharp. But I'm not completely sold on that. Relative to other cities Philly basketball fans are at least more knowledgeable.

I haven't really gotten a good feel for how the organization is handling personnel these days, but under Comcast, they would start leaking unfavorable things about players immediately prior to trading them/letting them walk, in order to soften the blow, or maybe just gauge fan sentiment. They did it with Andre Miller "He wasn't happy for $10M/year...", they did it with Dalembert, Iverson, I'm convinced that whole skipping the exit interview thing with Iguodala was another example where they leaked something that was overblown and just to make him look bad. It's a pretty silly practice, considering they should be driving up the market on their players rather than worrying about fan blowback.

No, you are what you do. Beasley hasn't performed well for a couple of years. Speculating about the reasons for that is pretty pointless. Can Beasley play better for a different team in the future? Maybe. Can Turner play better for a different team in the future? Maybe. How much better can each of them play in the future? I don't know but I wouldn't bet a lot better and consistently over extended periods.

An under-performer isn't automatically better because he isn't "your" under-performer.

No he was saying that when Miami traded him in 2010, I believe, he had more value than Turner did today because he clearly had more untapped potential. He's not saying anything about Beasley's value now. I agree, and would only add that Beasley wasn't actually all that bad in his Miami years. Apart from a short-lived spike in scoring in Minnesota, he's gotten worse since he left.

Little girls are made of sugar and spice
and last night Jrue's DFR was rather nice
But over time it's plain to glean
This windsurfer is bringing down the team
Oh, if only we drafted Dejuan Blair
His WS/48 is beyond compare
No, it never occurred to me
That that number's skewed by his playing on the most consistently winning franchise of the century

It's kind of supposed to be from Dollar Bill's perspective, for the most part. Seriously though, isn't DFR this kind of meaningless amalgam of rebounds (Jrue had 10), steals (Jrue had 5), and blocked shots (Jrue had 1)? I don't think it has anything to do with on/off or PER/OFR against. Those guys did go off (not sure how much Jrue covered Thornton, but the other two had strong games), and 82games seems to think Jrue's PER against has been pretty lousy this year. 19.3 and an efg% of .543, plus 4.5 FTA per 48 minutes. I have no clue if 82games really monitors who's guarding whom or just guesses though.

I think Statman has looked into their numbers in the past, it's a different metric on the team page (that one is supposed to be more about who you were guarding, not the opposing player at the same position.)

DFR is a straight how many points per 100 possessions did the opposing team score when you were on the floor. OFR is an amalgam which I can't figure out, nor find the formula for. Seems like TS%, offensive boards and turnovers are the only three stats taken into account, but I don't know in which units.

I looked through the box score, Thornton and Evans scored like 2 points on Jrue, combined. Thomas had like 17 or something.

Dollar Bill is dipping his quill in ink, writing some prose about how Foye is torching Jrue right now. Should be ready by about 4pm tomorrow. Pay no attention to the fact that Jrue isn't even in the game.

What's even more embarassing is going back to last year and reading some of the comments of his supporters and apologists and defenders. Talk about terrible. All that smack and innuendo for a total scrub.

What's far more embarrassing than any of those comments could be is that you don't have more worthwhile things to do with your life than to go back and reread year-old comments from anonymous schmucks on an obscure blog forum.

I'd be embarrassed to admit such a thing. In fact, I'd be embarrassed to admit that I was even interested enough to do such a thing.

Well let's see. I painted the living room, I vacuumed the whole house, I hung the ceiling grid and the drop-in tiles in the basement, I changed all the HVAC filters, I moved the refrigerators and cleaned all the dust collected under them, and I'll be damn if I was going to shovel 10 feet of snow at the front, side and back doors.

But thanks for the attempt to police my life activities and cast judgment upon what I do with MY time. You get that? M.y. t.i.m.e.

Glad Hawes plays good with no pressure and meaningless games. Trade this bum!

dese niggas suck yo forreal

another dude simple posted a worried smiley emoticon.

thanks for leaving the place like you found it-0an irrelevant franchise without much hope for the future, drawing notice only from the mentally ill and/or masochistic elements of the 'fanbase. intense?in a sense. passionate?lol. proud?of their instagram feeds, perhaps

Interesting quote from the recap: coach Doug Collins only half-jokingly before the game said the future of the NBA is headed toward 30 percent of possessions being 3-point shots. "The game has changed. ... Teams are too good defensively. ... It almost has to be where your 4-man has to be able to shoot the corner 3," he said.

If Collins realizes this, why doesn't he let our 4 shoot the corner 3, and why did he underutilize Wright back when we were playing for something?

by the way, it is officially a joke that jrue made the all star game. seems like his play levelled off as soon as his selection was announced. hard to blame him for realizing that there was nothing to play for in the second half.

all throughout the first half, jrue made frequent comments about how badly he wanted to be an all star...dc pimped him as an all star relentlessly...oposing coaches that dc is known to be friendly with, like doc rivers, pimped jrue's all syar candidacy as well...

i'm glad the kid was able to attain "the next goal i would like to reach in my career_) as he said during campaign season...i was happy for him at the time....but his season in toto certainly doesn't excite me. right now he is an inefficient-obviously, the teams absurd overreliance on his offense hurts his effiiency, but its hard to see it improving too dramatically given his gunner tendencies, inability to draw free throws, and league avg three point shooting on only what, three attempts per game?-0 offensive player with nice counting stats on a terrible team. he is never gonna be a legit number one option. if jrue is your star, you are fighting for lottery balls rather than playoff seeding every spring.

jrue would benefit from a big man, obviously, but in an ideally world he would be paired with a dynamic wing sorer. jrue needs someone else to be the "perimeter scorer" so he can save energy needed on d against the pgs in this league...playing of a wing scorer who doesn't suck more balls than he he scores(eliminating turner_) would allow jrue to develop his spot up, catch and shoot game which i think could become lethal and be the key to his efficiency on offense(fewer shot attempts, higher shooting percentage, more threes_)

actually feel like oladipo would look pretty good on jrue's wing. make for a nie looking perimeter d too

if you had to wager on one or the other, would you bet on jrue returning to the all star game or not?i'd go with no...esp without collins around to manage the campaign

Yeah, you're right. Oladipo isn't exactly the "ideal match" that I described, but I think he'd relieve some of the pressure on Jrue if he adapts well to the NBA and doesn't start hanging with Turner. Guess the more bankable upside of Jrue and Oladipo is perimeter d

anyone catch the turner question in the presser?something about about how to get him back on track in the last dozen games..."Yeah we'll have to get him back to playing that kind of ball he played before"...delivery was priceless-clearly doug did not trust himself to expand on that

the saddest part about evan's game was that he was clearly trying hard to play well-0showing intense frustration after mistakes, diving on the hardwood for a loose ball in the final moments of a blowout

Everyone at some point or another gets lost inside the Doughouse. Everyone except for shitty-ass Doug Collins himself. I'm just crossing my fingers & hoping we can reach the end of the season & Collins gets fired, before he fucks up anyone else's mind with his bullshit coaching style.

Your point about the "AAU and out of control" stuff is so GD true, by the way. While that's not a fair criticism for anyone (Shocker coming from DB, I know), Wall is the poster boy for that type of play. Also, he's now "a winner" for playing on an average team for the first time in his career. So much discernment.

I'll be interested to see if Wall's shooting holds. To his credit he has been much improved this year. Considering his first two years, I'm still plenty skeptical.

Saying that "the modifier fits" doesn't prove you're right that Jrue Holiday is spoiled. It just proves that you think you're right.

I don't know why you singled out me specifically, but are you happy with how the season went? I don't get why you're mocking another fan for basically rooting for the same team that you supposedly root for. That might actually be a first on here.

This a blog. Which includes opinion. If an opinion that doesn't jibe with yours gets you bent out of shape, maybe you should pick another activity. I didn't direct a comment to you. But you took offense to something I said and replied, derogating me. That's alright. But don't expect passivity from this end.

You like Jrue as a player, I don't especially. So what?

And, no, I'm not pleased by season results; perfect for masochists. 9-73 team had more dignity. This has been one of the worst seasons for viewing in history. And I'm not exaggerating.

There literally aren't enough hours in the day to point out the hypocrisy in every comment this boob makes. I usually leave it one response then just sort of laugh. He's almost as bad as the Turner lover who has decided the best thing to do now is lash out at Jrue.

Nah, it wouldn't make a difference. Certain people just like to spout nonsense. At least when the team is better there's more actual basketball to discuss. The syphlitic rantings of an old coot get drowned out.

All this talk about Turner is getting ridiculous. 9 out of 10 people would have taken him. I cant remember who you would have taken Brian but im pretty sure you were happy with the pick.

Hindsight being 20-20 we should have traded the pick for a few picks in 2015 but at the time turner was the consensus choice. A couple people mentioned Favors. In reality that draft was 3 years ago. Only 1 guy from that draft has been an all star. Not derrick favors. Not john wall. Not Turner. All 3 of them have underperformed.

Plus turner never was put in a position to succeed. he has had to play a position he didnt like with collins making everything even more challenging. Sometimes players with high ability get held back early in their careers and never recover. I am losing hope he can turn this around. We cant rewind time and mold him into a point guard, but to say he was such a poor choice or to blame him for all the teams failures is ridiculous.

The development of a corner 3 is officially the only good thing about Turner's third NBA season. His overall shooting has dropped off, and his numbers are either down or stagnant across the board. That stagnancy extends to the defensive end, where Turner's slow first step makes him vulnerable to blow-bys and results in close-outs that are often just a beat too late on the perimeter. Turner's tendency to play guys ultratight on the perimeter doesn't help on the blow-by front, since they have so little distance to cover in order to drive past him.

There is a helpful and skilled player in here somewhere. We just haven't seen it yet on a consistent basis."

Making excuses for Turners failures is also getting ridiculous. He sucks - period - he's lucky to be league average and thus is vastly over paid due to rookie salary scales, and just because 75% of the uninformed public wanted him doesn't mean that they're right. The public often has no clue what they're talking about

Plus turner never was put in a position to succeed. he has had to play a position he didnt like with collins making everything even more challenging.

What position would he like? Would he like to be like Allen Iverson and have the ball all the time? If he could play basketball on an NBA level maybe that would happen.

I don't think i'm making excuses for him. I honestly don't know what the problem is, but I do still believe he has the raw ability and I believe all the people like collins who say he's one of the hardest workers on the team. So if the problem isn't one of those 2 things, then I have to believe there is more than meets the eye. Some other things that held him back, and we already know a couple of those things for a fact.

Right from the beginning we knew Turner was only comfortable with the ball in his hands. He likes to look for passes, like a point guard and drive. That's why collins and turner kept saying he's a point guard after his early struggles. I honestly believe him and Jrue have a similar style, but instead of trying to mold him into a similar player they tried to make him something else.

At this point i don't know he can succeed on this team (especially with collins in charge), but I do believe he has a very good skillset and could succeed in the right system.

I'm not sure how you don't think you're making excuses for him because that's exactly what you did - never put in a position to succee, play a position he didn't 'like' (whatever that means), collins making everything challenging.

Those are to me the definition of 'excuses' for Evan Turner, but the primary problem is that Turner sucks at professional basketball...he dominated a conference that translates poorly to NBA success only when he was an upper classmen - the talented folk leave before they get that far.

You seem to be the only one left who believes he has a 'skillset' for the nba, but you at the same time continue to make excuses, or if you wish, allowances (which is just semantics) for his NBA failure, good and great players shine - regardless of where they are

As far as im concerned I am not trying to justify anything, as in the definition of excuse. Let alone usually people dont say "making excuses" unless the justification is poor. If you are bill russell says he is too old and frail to play, i don't say he ismaking excuses, because he is just stating the reason why he cant succeed. He's not giving a poor justification, so no one would accuse him of making excuses. You could consider this a justification, which fits a looser definition, but even then he most likely isn't trying to justify anything. Stating my opinion is not making excuses.

The rest of your comment is your opinion on why he hasn't done well. When I've watched him play, that's not my evaluation. I see a player who can rebound dribble shoot and basically do all the right things when his team is playing a certain brand of basketball with him playing a style that fits his abilities. I believe he has the ability because he has shown those abilities in NBA games. That's just my opinion.

So today on depressed fan, we learn that only weak justifications are excuses. But only in the basketball context, so as to make sense of all the usages of 'excuse' that are inconsistent with that definition, like "a good excuse" or "an excused absence" (which of course requires, if I recall my high school days correctly, a valid excuse). Maybe you can only "make" bad excuses. That might explain it.

Let's say a basketball player chooses not to practice his free throws even though he believes he should, and he says he is "too tired" but really he could have and should have. This is a standard example where someone is trying to justify there actions. This is the first key element of all the definitions.

In contrast, if he simply doesn't like basketball and doesn't want to play, this is not an excuse because he isn't trying to jusify the action.

The second element of the justification being "poor" is not always there. In fact, historically I would say this definition was more common, but the word does seem to be evolving over time. I have actually researched this word on multiple occasions and "poor justification" was the number 1 definition in the dictionary i use.

If you don't use that portion that is fine but there are many definitions that do include this part. I especially assume this definition when people say "making" excuses.

As an example, if the same basketball player justified his not practicing because there was a health emergency, people would no say he is "making excuses". They might "excuse" him, using the verb, but the word "making" would never be used.

An excused absense is a rare example where histically people have translated the verb excuse into the noun. As this word evolves i believe the second element is becoming less important, and merely the attempt to justify is all that matters.

I do understand, though, why others might view those statements as an excuse. It probably seemed like I was trying to justify his struggles, and if you believe my reasons were poor then that would fit both aspects.

I wasn't really thinking about whether he justified though. I was just trying to state my opinion on why he hasn't performed well. I do see that this could be viewed as a justification, but that wasn't the goal of my post. I wasn't thinking about that or trying to excuse him. That was an extension you might make on your own if you agree.

For all i know, some of the blame could fall on him. I was trying to put some of that blame in other places. In any case, if the blame does fall in other places, then there may be nothing to justify.

I can admit that a lot of what I said does sound like a justification. I don't believe that was my intention, but you are right that the word "make" had a lot to do with why I disagreed.

LOL. I'm just saying that I wasn't taking all the blame off of him. Didn't mean to make it sound like I think he's entirely not to blame. You're right. He's responsible for his play. That could be why i never used these arguments to justify his poor play.

As for the topic about Favors, I dont watch him play much but I would like to admit that he is looking like the better pick. Both him and Turner have had moments where they looked like they can be very productive in the NBA, but Favors is a big and those who chose him really do seem to know what they were talking about.

In retrospect, his tagging Turner as a 21st century Calbert Cheaney not only looks really smart, but actually massively overstates Turner's talent. Until Cheaney mysteriously fell off a cliff after his fourth season, he was consistently putting up respectable TS%'s of .530, which is actually a kind of admirable achievement given that he (a) only made 4 threes his fourth season, and (b) was a wing player.

This is also inaccurate. I've mentioned to you before, some years ago, that I was not the commenter that compared him to Calbert Cheaney and you've repeatedly referred to this multiple times. I've previously said he was an Iguodala clone (before draft), Royal Ivey-lite, not as good as the guy he replaced Willie Green, a ball-dominant turnover prone backup PG, a weak Swiss army knife jack of a few trades master of none, and not deserving of a starting position over Jodie Meeks, but never have I compared him to Calbert Cheaney.

This is simply not true. It has been spun and manufactured by a few here over time for whatever reason. These were my comments/reactions from lottery night when the Sixers moved up to the #2 pick for proof to squash all the falsehoods:

Now before you attempt to counter that with my comment on draft day about Wes Johnson may turn out to be a star, there was a reason for my shift in selection. Days before draft night, there were published reports that Collins, Stefanski, and company were leaning towards taking a wing and this drooling of sorts over Turner's and Wes Johnson's professionalism and maturity. It was if they had shifted course and weren't even considering any of the plethora of big men that were expected to go near the top of the draft. Therefore, when Collins made his public comments about Wes Johnson....

"But I can tell you that this kid out of Syracuse, Wesley Johnson, had one terrific workout for our team. He's a special player. He has a lot of skill. And if we get him, we'll be lucky to have him."

....I stated that I hoped that Collins wasn't blowing smoke and we selected Wes Johnson, because at that point according to published reports the alternative was Evan Turner, who I was adamantly against.

I was always in the Favors camp as evidenced by the euphoria displayed on lottery night. I shifted and stated what I did on draft day because I thought Favors wasn't even in the running anymore. Wes Johnson was never my pick, he just ended up being by default because of my disdain for Evan Turner. Sort of like the lesser of two evils, sans the far-fetched and now out-in-left-field-belief at the time that he'd "be a potential star".

I'll leave it to others to make fun of your impressive self-archival, and will confine myself to pointing out that you did, then, prefer Johnson to Turner, and that you thought Johnson was the best wing in the draft. But actually, he turned out to be the worst; George, Gordon Hayward, James Anderson, Quincy Pondexter, Jordan Crawford, Landry Fields, Lance Stephenson, and even Turner have been better. You have to look to Lazar Hayward at 30 to find a wing who's been as marginal. So between not wanting to draft Turner and thinking Wes Johnson was the best wing in the draft, I think that's sort of a wash.

Except I never thought Johnson was the best wing in the draft. And never declared that, only that he had the potential to be a star which was exponentially off base.

Which all of this really isn't the point. I wanted Favors all along, yet you falsely claimed, along with others previously, that I wanted Johnson. So I impressively offered up the proof to quell all the aspersions.

I believe that, but it's hard to imagine Collins deferring to "The Shot" (and his incumbent braintrust) in such an important matter going forward. Guess Doug was just grateful to get the Philly job, muzzled himself for the time being.

It seems like it's time to move on. Turner is getting worse by the day. Sometimes, teams move on too soon, though. Chauncey Billups (picked 3rd) was traded in his rookie season and still wasn't much good for about 3 years. Boston, Toronto, Denver, Orlando and Minnesota all moved on without him. (He had a pretty good 5th season with Minnesota.) I don't think Turner will end up as a starter on a championship team and an All-Star, but I find it hard to believe he'll continue to be this bad. I guess it's wishful thinking.

The second pick is cursed. So many busts, very few Durants. I don't know if any team would have taken Durant over Oden, but if it happened, Oden would have fit the cursed mold.

At best, Brian was resigned to the Sixers picking Turner. I don't remember him having much good to say about him. He was all about Favors.

By the way, how good is Favors? He's averaging 8 and 6 for his career, 1.2 blocks, doesn't start, and has no offensive game.

I think above all, Favors has a lot of room to reasonably improve where Turner doesn't. Not to say he's been great so far, because you're right, he hasn't.

The fact that he doesn't start is part of the reason his counting stats are down. Corbin, with the amount of bigs their team has, only plays him 23 minutes a game. With more consistent time, I think it's fair to say that those numbers would improve on a per minute basis. I can't believe they still have both Jefferson and Millsap on that team. If they traded one (preferably Jefferson), you have a nice three-man rotation in the frontcourt.

I'd say Turner has plenty of room to improve because he probably can't get worse.

Look, Turner has played fairly well on numerous occasions so he has the potential to play better than he's playing now. He might have a modest career of reasonable length before he's through with the game. He's got to get out of here, though, because the fans have soured on him, his teammates may have soured on him, and he seems to have let his failures here get into his head. Trade him in the off season and let all parties move on. Sometimes someone's first big job just doesn't work out so well.

No reason to hate the guy. Just trade him and move on. It's not like he cost the team 16 million dollars and multiple players without ever playing a game. His inflated salary is solely due to his draft status and he earned that because he was a truly great college player. And unlike some "experts" around here who never watched him play in college or could care less about NCAA basketball, I did watch him in college numerous times and he didn't just "beat up" on underclassmen in a weak league. He was a dominating player in both his soph and junior years.

Turner has cost the team quite a bit of money - and the one time in a long time where they had a high lottery pick - and it was wasted - that's how you build in the nba - sadly - you need a little bit of luck - the one year the sixers had that kind of luck they picked wrong (though there were no franchise super stars in that draft anyway it seems, they still picked wrong)

And I don't buy the premise that just because a guy can't get worse - he has room to improve - Turners good games are rare and the exception as far as I'm concerned - he is who he is - and while he might not be able to get worse (I don't believe that's true either) that doesn't mean the inverse (converse?) is true - this might be the 'best' he'll ever be.

Sorry, but I just don't buy that "he can't get worse" as a reason why he could get better. He hasn't shown any reasons while he'll change and be a consistently productive player. And yeah, I agree that in college he was great. Heck, I was one of the people who wanted them to draft him. It doesn't mean he hasn't been a below average NBA player, which is what we all care about.

Saying that has nothing to do with hating him as a person, like someone like Eddies' might come off as doing. It has nothing to do with the fans, who honestly for the most part haven't soured on him as much as he's deserved. Ditto with his teammates, who actually seem to enjoy playing with the guy and hanging around him off the court. There are no excuses for why Evan Turner has been a bad basketball player here. It's 100 percent on his failings.

Maybe he'll be better somewhere else, but from what he's showed here, I doubt it. That's not hating him, it's just being honest about his situation.

I agree that his failures are entirely his but he seems to have compounded them lately by inability to deal well with his situation. I also don't criticize the fans or even his teammates from souring on him if that is the case.

I don't know whether he could be better somewhere else and either do you or anyone else on this board. I know that he has been better than he's playing now so I some reason for a shred of optimism.

I think Favors is an impact player on the defensive end right now. Big impact player. No idea if the offense will ever progress beyond needing to be set up for dunks, but he isn't a liability on that end. If he was playing for a team w/ a need in the middle, he'd be getting 35 min/game (assuming he could stay out of foul trouble) and producing solid numbers. Don't know if he'll ever be an All Star, odds are probably against it, but if they'd drafted him, the team would be in much better shape right now than they are.

The team wouldn't be in a better position, because Collins would give him the same short-stick treatment he is giving Arnett Moultrie & we've already seen that proven with Collins in regards to Vuc & Lavoy last year. He complained about a lack of bigs, but pretended like Moultrie wasn't even on the bench. They sent Moultrie down to the D-League, brought him back & he still rode the pine until Collins had absolutely-positively no choice in letting him play. Someone that pigheaded & stupid would have only done the same thing to Favors.

It's certainly possible. Though I think the reason Voose and Moultrie didn't see many minutes is because of their defense. Favors would've probably found the floor for the very reason those guys didn't.

Could we clear up this business about defensive rating? Favors's defensive rating this year is 102, according to BK Ref. But the offensive rating of opponents when he's on the court, also according to BK Ref, is 106. (Which is still 2 points better than when he's off.) So if player defensive rating were really just your team's defensive rating when you were on the court, shouldn't those numbers be the same? If you look at their glossary, they refer you to Dean Oliver's book, Basketball on Paper, and when I checked my copy he seemed to say a player's defensive rating was basically like PER but only with defensive box score stats, and that it was a crude estimate. I also want to know where you found the box score that told you how much Thornton and Evans scored on Jrue.

I don't have a clear answer on DFR. Their on/off is something relatively new. I don't remember Oliver having a calculation for DFR, but I can take a look. There might be a pace adjustment involved in DFR, they adjust for pace for team DFR and OFR numbers.

I've been trying to think of a way this team can improve next year and I can't come up with anything, except maybe getting lucky and making a pick like Paul George or Rondo. A good trade seems impossible.

The Sixers will eventually be a very good team. I'm not sure any of the current players will be on the team when that happens. I could have happened quite soon had Bynum been healthy and they made a few more good moves. But as things stand I'd say there is maybe a 50% chance the team is good while Jrue is here, and for everyone it is highly unlikely.

So it makes it hard to get too worked up about Hawes, ET, Bynum or any of the rest of the team when they will be someone elses asset or problem prior to this team being relevant.

I really only care how these guys do in relation to the Sixers, and they really are all just filling out the jersey during a period of irrelevance. Sort of like worrying about Spoon, Barros, Perry or Sharone Wright in the days before AI.

Knowing that some in the front office are chiefly responsible for creating the mess of '12-'13 (and myriad seasons prior), I don't see a basis for your optimism about the organization's eventual good fortune. Is it the result of enthusiasm for the new ownership group? Or a product of sunny belief in the natural selectivity of time? Given current conditions - including low public regard - I see the organization as teetering on a possibility of greater irrelevancy and perhaps extinction in this city.

Last season, the Sixers averaged 16,378/game. This season, 16,650. In their championship season (82-83), they averaged 13,474, the following year they averaged 13,366. All numbers include playoffs. (The Spectrum held 17,921 at the time).

I'd assume the attendance numbers will drop next year (I'm sure they sold a bunch of season tickets on the back of the playoff success last year, and then the Bynum signing), and the secondary market is definitely depressed, but the attendance numbers aren't bad.

You know attendance numbers are based on tickets sold not people who show up - the depressed secondary market to me is an indicator of season ticket holders who don't care to go to games, and are looking for any money back on the money they wasted in the off season (as they see it)

Hell when they give away free tickets to organizations or groups or corps or whatever, they count that as attendance as well regardless of whether those folk show up.

Interesting thing about this - and why attendance numbers are bogus - look at the heat - supposedly average over capacity for their home games this year - but turn on a heat home game sometime - there always seem to be empty seats

What's sad is the sixers average a higher number, and percentage, on road games than home games

So if we assume nearly 20% are phantom tickets, either people bought them and didn't show or the team gave them away. That would put them even with their attendance in their last championship season. I'm not sure that would be classified as waning fan interest, even if it should be.

Not for nothing, but technological advances, costs of tickets and the economy status have to go in to attendance evaluation when comparing now and then - and I have no idea how to adjust ticket prices then versus now for inflation and such.

Two problems. One, BK Ref says we had attendance of 646K in 1982. Over 41 games, I believe that's just under 16,000.

Problem two: NBA attendance in general was way, way lower in 1982. The Sixers at the time were the second most attended team in basketball, trailing the Lakers by just 1400 tickets sold. The average team sold 10,000 tickets a game. Today the average is somewhere between 16,000 and 17,000. So they used to be a wildly popular team by NBA standards and now they're an average one. They've only kept pace because the league is far more popular than it was 30 years ago.

Okay, so it really was 13,500, but like I said, that was an extremely well-attended team by NBA standards and this isn't. So I think you can say there's been waning fan interest. Surely there's at least been some dropoff from some post-1982 point.

There's dropoff from the finals run in '01, to be sure. But league-wide popularity also translates locally, and hearkening back to the glory days when fans loved the Sixers and supported them is silly.